and 'e got a slant and slid away, while my boat busts 'er sides open
on the reef, The 'ole blooming atoll was 'eaped with the blooming
cargo. Willy 'ad luck; I 'ad 'ell. It's all an 'azard."

He had not found his aitches since he left Liverpool, thirty years
earlier, nor dropped his silly expletives. A gray-haired, red-faced,
laughing man, stockily built, mild mannered, he proved, as the
afternoon wore on, to be a man from whom Münchausen might have
gained a story or two.

"They call me Lying Bill," he said to me. "You can't believe wot I
say."

"He's straight as a mango tree, Bill Pincher is," McHenry asserted
loudly. "He's a terrible liar about stories, but he's the best
seaman that comes to T'yti, and square as a biscuit tin. You know how,
when that schooner was stole that he was mate on, and the rotten
thief run away with her and a woman, Bill he went after 'em, and
brought the schooner back from Chile. Bill, he's whatever he says he
is, all right--but he can sail a schooner, buy copra and shell cheap,
sell goods to the bloody natives, and bring back the money to the
owners. That's what I call an honest man."

Lying Bill received these hearty words with something less than his
usual good-humor. There was no friendliness in his eye as he looked
at McHenry, whose empty glass remained empty until he himself
refilled it. Bullet-headed, beady-eyed, a chunk of rank flesh shaped
by a hundred sordid adventures, McHenry clutched at equality with
these men, and it eluded him. Lying Bill, making no reply to his
enthusiastic commendation, retired to his bunk with a paper-covered